Why Now?
The world’s top climate scientists have told us
we have a ten-year window to make rapid reductions in the carbon pollution causing global warming in order to hold the warming to the low end of under 3 degrees F. If we don’t, we will severely destabilize the global climate, leading to extreme weather, droughts, floods and sea-level rise that will be increasingly hard for humans to manage. The 2022 Teach-in builds on the April 2021 Solve Climate Global Dialogs--
over 100 university-hosted climate solutions webinars around the world. View
the 2021 webinars (recordings) and use them to #MakeClimateAClass.
Why State-Level and Local Action?
The very good news on climate is that a whole suite of clean energy solutions—from solar to wind to battery storage to electric vehicles and more— have gotten cheap and are getting cheaper. In many markets, these solutions now cost substantially less then the polluting, fossil fuel alternatives. Bard researchers have explored (
here and
here) the
Solar Dominance Hypothesis: the idea that in the 2020’s solar plus storage will emerge as part of a suite of highly disruptive clean energy technologies. These powerful market trends mean that scaling up climate solutions is increasingly about
smoothing the paths for adoption, and much of this work needs to happen locally. A glaring example: The US state of Florida, nicknamed the “Sunshine State”, has very little solar power. Just across the border,
Georgia is a top-10 solar state. The difference? Policy driven by civic action. Rising state and local action around climate solutions could open the road to “solve climate”—the energy side—over the next decade.
Starting 4.6.21: Global Dialog: Fifty Countries / One Hundred Universities
To focus the world on regional-level and local solutions, the
Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College is organizing simultaneous “global dialog” webinars, one in fifty different countries, and in every US state. Beginning on April 6th, we will hear from climate solutions experts in Hungary, South Africa, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Florida, New Mexico and Minnesota-- 100 sites worldwide-- about ambitious but feasible actions that could happen soon in their state to spur a just, Green Recovery, get the world on track to solving climate by 2030. Colleges and universities and local faith, civic and business groups will host viewings of the webinars and in person discussions of how to get involved in climate solutions.
Faculty at all levels and across the curriculum worldwide can assign viewing of the webinars live or recorded as homework, and then spend the next class discussing climate solutions. This opportunity is not just for environmental studies classes. The challenges posed by solving climate change necessarily range across history, science, business, culture, economics, psychology, religion, government, media, journalism and the arts. Solve Climate has
disciplinary guides for follow-up discussion here for the state-level, solutions-focused webinars.
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